Times up!

Times Up!

“How did I get here? Now if that’s not the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” He said to the man who sat quietly listening.

“I got booted out of the Army for a crime I didn’t commit. I grew up tough. My mom was an on again off again alcoholic. My dad was a tough-as-nails army Green Beret who didn’t much like kids. We lived in some pretty shithole places. My dad would be gone sometimes for months, and my mom would get bored and drunk. She was nice enough when she was sober, but oh when she drank. So at night I wasn’t home much. I wouldn’t come home until I thought she would be passed out. She liked it when my father came home. She was mostly okay then. But he wouldn’t stay long before he was shipped out again.

           “My grades in school weren’t very good. When I was in fourth grade my father took me out back and said ‘Son, if your stupid you better be tough and be able to fight,’ so he taught me to fight. Actually, at first he just kicked my ass until I got better at it. Now, I’m not stupid. When I was twelve, we found out that I turned the letters around in my head when I read them. Dyslexic is what they called it. I got a tutor who helped me with it after school, and my grades improved some. But I think by then, I enjoyed fighting more than reading. I had reasons to fight. The people at the PX knew my mom bought more booze than food so word got around that she was a drunk. You can’t let people call your mom a drunk, so I fought a lot. They didn’t say it around me anymore, but they still said it.

           “My mom stopped for a month. The first two weeks were really hard for her, but after that it was like she was a new woman. She was nice and kind. She hugged me and said she was sorry. We did puzzles and played games. Life was really good. Then we got word that dad had been shot and was in a field hospital halfway around the world. That put her over the edge again. Dad never made it home. Eventually, Mom got lonely. After a while, people called her worse things than a drunk, and I ended up fighting more.

           “I joined the army, of course. I figured I’d do my time and learn some skills so after my twenty years I could get a decent job and buy a house. Maybe even find some girl to marry. That didn’t happen.

“Like I said I got kicked out of the army after being in the stockade for ninety days serving my sentence. Army jail is not like regular jail. You have a bunch of young men filled with piss-and-vinegar locked up together. All of them thinking they are the toughest badass in the place and wanting to prove it. I’m 6’3”. I wasn’t the tallest but, I think, I fought the most. The little guys would try to prove something by taking me on, and the bigger guys figured they could beat me. The guards would even place bets on the outcome. I only lost once, and the son-of -a-bitch who beat me was 5’10”.

“Sorry, Doc, that doesn’t explain why I’m here so let me get to that. When I got out I was down on my luck and broke. I didn’t know what to do. What jobs could I find in New Orleans if I didn’t want to work in a restaurant or a fast-food joint. I found a local paper. I was surprised they still print them, and they had help wanted adds. Only one caught my attention. Security person needed, seven PM to one AM. Private home number four La Bella Lane.

“I found the place. It was old. One of the originals from the early eighteen hundreds or something. It wasn’t in bad shape, so I knocked on the door. A lady answered, she was fifty something, I’m guessing. Nice. She hired me and told me to be back at seven. I found a park and waited. I changed in to my fatigues so I would look more security like and at her front door put on my tactical belt with my gun and knife strapped to it.

She let me in and started showing me around. She saw my gun and said,“I don’t think you will need that.”

“‘Well, you can never be too sure,” I said to her.

“Then she saw my knife and said, “you might need that.”

“I think it was the ticking that bothered me so much. Every room, and there were a lot of rooms, had clocks in them. Not just one or two, no there were like ten or twenty to a room. “My father was a collector, and it protects us from them,” she said.

“‘From who,” I asked.

“‘I don’t know,” she replied. And the clocks just kept ticking. My job was to walk from room to room and check on the clocks. If one of them stopped, I needed to wind it and set it again. I was to do this for seven hours. I could stop and eat for fifteen minutes but then I would have to resume my rounds. That was all right. I didn’t bring any food anyway. Seemed like a pretty easy gig.

“I noticed that she hadn’t locked the front door, so to show her what a good security guy I was I said, “I’ll start by locking the front door.”

She frowned and said, “You needn’t bother, nobody comes in from outside.”

“I got to admit, Doc, that one threw me. I figured the lady was a little crazy then. I mean, who wouldn’t be with all that ticking.”

“So, she goes to bed, and I start my rounds. I wished I’d brought some earplugs but usually you want to hear everything when you’re on guard duty. Anyway the first two hours go by without a hitch. The house was big, and it took me fifteen minutes just to do a circuit and that didn’t include any of the ten bedrooms.”

“Then I notice some of the clocks had stopped, and I find the key and wound them and reset them. Then I go on to the next room and do the same thing, and the next and the next. Now, it’s taking me thirty minutes to make a round. More clocks have stopped. More winding, more ticking, and I’m starting to get tense and pissed off. I walk into the room that has a bar and decide to take my break. There is no food, but I see a nice bottle of bourbon. What the hell one won’t hurt, right? This room has the least amount of clocks, the ticking is not so bad, so I sit and drink. Tastes good. Only one clock ticking. Nice. I’ll set the others when I’m done. “

“The clock stops. ‘What the hell was that,’ I say out loud. Something went by me. I get a chill. It’s cold. I was sweating a minute before, and I was hot from walking up and down stairs, now the cold is everywhere. I can even see my breath. I run to the clock and start winding. The ticking starts. The cold starts to fade. I run to the other clocks and wind them. I run to the next room and the next room as fast as I can. Wind, run, wind, run.”

“At one AM, the little lady comes out of her bedroom. She finds me winding one of the clocks in the dining room. I’m a sweaty mess. ‘

“You can stop that now. They never come out after one,” she says.

“Who,” I ask.

“Don’t you know? You obviously met one. Did the clocks stop?” she said and raised an eyebrow. “No matter. Here is your hundred dollars. Will you be back tomorrow?”

“I took the money and shook my head. Hell no I remember thinking.”

“So you see Doc, that’s why I’m talking to you. It kinda bothered me, and I’m not sleeping so well. Do you think you can give me something so I can get some sleep? What do you say, Doc? Please.”

“I’m not a doctor son. I’m the base Chaplin. I came here to pray for you.” The man in the black robes stood up, and the guard opened the cell.

“But, Doc, I didn’t do it. They say it was friendly fire, but it wasn’t me. I’m not guilty. I didn’t kill my friends!”

“They found a hallucinogenic in your blood. Those weren’t clocks, they were your fellow soldiers. May God have mercy on your soul.” The Chaplin turned and walked away.